Hearing and Literacy: What did you do?

In the SRP project all of the factors that have been in play in the past that we know worked were put into place. That is to say, teachers were more than in-serviced; teachers were brought into the project at a colleague level. They were given the information and then visited on a very frequent basis. Questions were answered and teaching was directly monitored and there was an attempt to put in place better educational practices for teaching literacy.

And here's the most important part — audition as the key component. And when I say audition, making sure that the right kinds of assisted listening devices were available to compensate and to make these otherwise abnormal ears hear, as if there were no problems. We can achieve that a number of different ways and they were put into place.

First of all, sound field systems offer an opportunity to raise voices above background noise to a level where processing no longer becomes the hindrance that it's been in the past. A second is that hearing aids and FM listening devices that essentially bring the teacher's voice directly to the child's ear are the single most powerful benefit that children can have for that hearing impairment.